if brainstorming doesn’t work, what does?

(Video link here.) We’re getting a little tired of pat ideas about how creativity works, based on “research”. Take Jonah Lehrer’s quick little film debunking the practice of brainstorming: getting a group of people in a room to throw out ideas without have their ideas criticized. The gist is that RESEARCH has shown that every idea having equal weight stymies the creative process, and nothing great ever comes of it. It’s conflict and criticsm that are the real liberating factors in group creativity. Lehrer’s thesis is a limited and, in our experience, untrue view. Ask anyone whose ever been to a coop board or town hall meeting.

It leaves us wondering why no one mentions the wonderous practice of collaboration, which is not necessarily about saying ‘yes’, or ‘no’, or ‘that’s a bad idea’. Rather, it’s about saying — or thinking — a simultaneous ‘YES, AND…’.and ‘WHAT IF WE…..?’.

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